Wich is the best quality combination for street and scenics : Tamron 17-50 or Sigma 24-60 2.8 + Tokina 17 3.5 SL ?

<p>Hi. I' m here to decide what set of lenses could be my ideal solution for travel, cosidering hi IQ and convenience too. A single zoom lens would be very easy to carry on, but a 2 lenses set will be nice too for my needs, no problem. So, I was wandering about IQ. I know Tamron 17 -50 has a great reputation, and the focal range will cover all my needs. I know 17mm on dx is not that wide, but for my needs is wide enough. I know Sigma 24-60 2.8 ( discontinued) is a great zoom too, and I could fill the gap on the wide end adding a Tokina 17 3.5 SL ( AIS type) prime lens. I' ve heard this Tokina has very low distortion and great sharpness stopped down at 5.6 , so it could be great for landcapes and buildings, where distortion is critical. I know , on the other end, that tamron 17-50 shows a significant distortion from 17 to 24 mm, and this is not desiderable for scapes and more worse for buildings. But I know that shooting RAW and working on PS perspective and distortion correction could fix nicely the problem. Which solution do you suggest for my needs, the Tamron 17-50 or the sigma 24-60 2.8 + tokina 17 3.5 ? I also know these 2 latter lenses are full frame...Thank you very much. Marco.</p>

<p>Oh, sorry...My camera is a Nikon D90.</p>

<p>I guess it all depends on your style... It looks that you don't really need a long lens. For me the tamron 17-50 is fine for most of the 90% the pictures I make. I would add a fast prime such as the 50/1.8 or 35/1.8 for night shooting or portraits.</p>

<p>But, I could travel with the 17-50 alone...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>You'll find no metering with a wide angle lens a pain in the neck in the field. If it's only those choices, get the Tamron. Distortion in landscapes is not really such a problem. I've never corrected an 18mm shot with my 18-200, because my landscapes aren't boring square geometric images by and large.</p>

<p>Do you already have any lenses?</p>

<p>I don' t find any difficult to have not metering for landscapes, 'cause I can take my time and adjust the exposition looking at the lcd and hystograms. My question is all concernet to image quality. The "faults" of tamron 17-50 at wide end, stopped down to 5.6, could be fixed well on PS CS3 ? or it could be a better choice to shhot with tokina 17 3.5 for lanscapes and buildings ?</p>

<p>...sorry for the many typing and grammatical mistakes...</p>

<p>I don't know much about either lens, but I can tell you from a practical standpoint you'll be much happier with a one lens solution. What happens when you want to bring a Telephoto along? Or a low light prime? The amount of lenses you're going to be carrying will quickly add up. Nothing beats having just one lens to worry about when traveling; less time spent thinking about which lens to use, more time spent on the important stuff like subject and composition.</p>

<p>I'm not familiar with the Tamron 17mm, but if its like other ultra wide primes out there, it too will suffer from some distortion that will need correcting in Photoshop to get truly straight lines. So don't let the distortion be a reason for going with a prime over the zoom. Remember, by f/8 - f/11 most wide angle lenses (zoom or prime) are going to perform about the same. So if you're going to be using the wide end of the zoom for architecture I wouldn't worry too much about softness wide open. That said, I'm not an architectural shooter, so you folks out there feel free to correct me.</p>

<p>Take the Tamron, fixing some distortion is easy and it's much nicer to use than Sigma+Tokina combo. Besides, Tokina 17/3.5 isn't that great, I have one and like it on film (for one obvious reason) but Tamron (or Sigma 18-50/2.8 which I've used more) can do everything it does on aps-c digital.</p>

<p>marco, for landscapes it doesnt matter, but if you're doing any kind of street photography involving active subjects you wont want to change lenses. for people pics, i'm not sure there's any real advantage in going with that particular two-lens combo over the 17-50 here, unless you like missing shots.</p>

 

<p>also, besides being a great people lens, the tamron is pretty good at landscape stopped down a bit...</p><div></div>

<p>There must be a lot of variation in production quality of non-Nikon lenses. My Tokina 17mm SL, F3.5 on D200 is really outstanding.</p>